Another day, Xi rails
against those within the party who he claims praise capitalism and
denigrate socialism, demanding loyalty and discipline, not dialogue with those
who may hold different views.

Will The Real Xi please stand up?

In fact, this is
The Real Xi:a leader preaching
salvation through ideology instead of economics; someone who sees party reform
as the best and more reliable sort of political reform; and a national manager
who believes that while his predecessors were transitional figures for their
times, China now needs someone who will be transformational.

In short, The Real Xi is a real leader with real
challenges.

There are two major considerations in that respect.

First, that Xi faces resistance, though not outright
organized opposition to his agenda.It’s
not been easy for his visits and speeches to get front-page play in a timely
and consistent fashion—one reason why Xi pressed Communist party media a few months back to actually act
like it was part of the Party, and why essays since
then continue to stress that point.For example, the speech referenced above that appeared in the most
recent issue of Qiushi took place at
a meeting this past December—that is, almost a half year ago.If Xi is all-powerful, why did a major
internal speech take so long to surface?

And there are also a lot of party officials whose personal
rice bowls have been broken by Beijing’s anticorruption campaign.They’re not happy, though many of them have
been rendered mute by the same campaign.They might be angry, but they’re also quarantined.

But what’s troubling for Xi is that there are at least an
equal number of cadres whose careers were created by following the established
rules of performance and promotion that existed before Xi came onto the scene.By hitting out at those who bent the rules in
their favor, Xi is undercutting those officials who were good at their jobs, at
least as those jobs had been defined before.That part of the crackdown produces a fair amount of ill will at the
upper and middle echelons of government, and creates more than a little
indecision at lower levels because cadres aren’t sure what they’re supposed to
be doing, only what they’re not.

And Xi surely knows that’s the downside—which is why he’s
been so adamant lately in hitting out at those who would form cliques and
factions to oppose his reforms.Xi isn’t
talking about the political environment that he inherited (which is what many
observers assume), but the one that he surely realizes that his own efforts
have created.Xi doesn’t like political
clans as a rule, but he’s far more concerned with them standing up for the
status quo, and therefore in the way of his supporters--supporters who’ve been
screaming for social change that’s engineered from above by the Communist party,
instead of emerging (or even erupting) from below.

That’s a tough notion for some outside China to grasp.That is, that Xi and his allies in the party
ranks see their country threatened far more by elements within the party seeking
to thwart change, than they fear protests or social upheaval from below.

What’s actually happening is that Xi and his like-minded
comrades want to be in control of the process of changing China, instead of
trying to suffocate reform and hope for the best.That’s why Xi And Friends hit out at anyone
who has a different narrative about the type of change China needs to believe
in, and
do so often with real anger and ardor.The argument isn’t over what type of reform, but that there should be
reform—and to the Communist party at that, not the economy.

The Real Xi, in other words, is someone who is now moving
more carefully, adjusting his strategy to fit the new circumstances that he
created.

Which leads to the second consideration: That a major reason
why The Real Xi has been so difficult to discern is that Xi Jinping is
subverting the narrative of Chinese politics as it’s been taught and passed on
by so many Western analysts of Chinese affairs.